Game company Blizzard faces harsh Criticism over position on Hong Kong, China

    In recent months, pro-democracy protests have been raging all across Hong Kong, gaining much media attention. While most private citizens in the U.S support Hong Kong in their efforts to reach independence, this has put several international business owners in an extremely difficult position. Though, on the one hand, these American-owned businesses likely support the American values those in Hong Kong are fighting for, if the outwardly express this support, they could lose their extremely valuable business with China.

       This exact situation has played out with the gaming company Activision Blizzard. One popular professional gamer, who often streamed his games on twitch, was banned from competition after expressing support for Hong Kong during an official switch. This has caused much controversy for the company. There have been massive boycotts of the company, as well as employee walkouts in support of the gamer. Even through these boycotts, the company's stock price has held solidly and it has not lost any support from large corporations, so though the company's reputation is tarnished, its profits are not suffering.